Yesterday we spent some time reflecting on God, the Lover. Today we read about The Superior Covenant.In Christ we have the offering of the only vow that really matters. Jesus lives a life of integrity – which we see through the matching of his words and actions – that the promise of the Creator is true and valid. God vows to protect, defend, forgive and love us. This vow has an eternal life and cannot be broken.

We look for a reflection of this kind of constancy and authenticity in others and we are often disappointed. Promises are given and broken. Vows are spoken and then abandoned without much thinking of the distant consequences. Immediate pleasures obtained take precedence over commitment and nurturing. Too often we encounter – both in ourselves and in others – quick solutions that do not last, superficial thinking that takes the place of measured consideration, and artless worship that cannot stand the tests of life. If we expect to weather storms, we must make preparations: take in stores, shore up our shelter, and make contingency and fall-back plans when events around us whirl out of control.

What are the resources we gather into our stockpile? What are the edifices we build in which to shelter? What are the plans we make to avoid pain? Do we hoard what we find or do we share? Do we hover in life with a narrow way of thinking and a small band of compatriots or do we seek to ever widen the circle by inviting in those we think are our enemies? Do we see suffering as something to be evaded at all costs or do we see it as the portal to a life of transformed beauty?

What are the promises we make? What are the promises we keep? What are our expectations?

The answers to all these questions are more simple, more beautiful and more challenging than we can imagine; yet the rewards are abundant and the joy transcending.

The answers, the vows and the kept promises are all found in a life lived as the Christ asks. When we rely on a stockpile of faith we have stored by acting in the belief that God is in charge, the supply is never-ending. Our stores will never run dry – much like the widow in 2 Kings 4 who finds that the oil blessed by the prophet Elisha never reaches bottom.

When we become like the sparrow and the swallow in Psalm 84, we build nests and find protection when we nestle near and beneath the altar of our sacrifices to God, when we construct a temple for the in-dwelling of the Spirit. Christ quickly steps into this temple which we build in ourselves, and it is this Christ – this presence of God – that we carry with us everywhere. He is our constant companion and protection in our pilgrimage.

When we step into the discomfort of our pain to offer it for love of friends and enemies alike, we are transformed by this salvific love which redeems not only others but ourselves.

These are the promises we make. These are the vows that we keep when we enter this SuperiorCovenant with our creator. This is how we weather the storms of life. This is how we find greatest joy . . . in the believing . . . in the hoping . . . in the knowing that this love is eternal, redemptive and beyond anything we might imagine. This promise of presence and joy are not only awaited in the next life; they are present in the here and now. We have only to step forward – into our discomfort and anxiety – at the call.

When we enter into this most excellent of promises . . . we enter into our life with Christ and his guarantee that he is constant, that he is transformative, and that his love is the peace we seek.

The promise here is not that life will be smooth or that problems will fall away from us quickly and without pain. The promise of Christ is that when the storms present themselves, as they surely will, we will have the means, the vision and the strength . . . in Christ . . . to weather the tempest.

Jesus as the Light of the World is a familiar theme to Christians which is celebrated during the Advent season. In the Jerusalem Temple the sanctuary light served as a symbol of the presence of Yahweh and so it was important that the oil be clear – this purity ensured the burning of the lamp. The Showbread was prepared with a particular recipe and laid out in a special fashion with frankincense; it was eaten only by the Temple priests. Both the bread and the light served to remind the Israelites of their perpetual covenant with Yahweh.

In his homily this morning Bishop Newman referred to the habit we humans have of taking and saving photographs as we try to capture particular moments in our lives. The custom of making scrapbooks or yearbooks to commemorate events is something we do as we conserve for later recall the goodness of certain moments or periods in our lives. The Bishop suggested that we would do well to make spiritual scrapbooks of our lives that would serve to remind us of the goodness of God; and he asked that we reflect on today’s Psalm (103) in an intentional way: The Lord is kind and merciful . . . O, my soul, forget not all his benefits . . . he heals all ills . . . he redeems life from destruction . . . he is slow to anger and abounding in kindness . . . he does not always chide . . . he does not keep wrath forever . . . he does not requite us with our crimes . . . he crowns us with kindness and compassion. Reading this litany of God’s goodness reminds us of Paul’s anthem to love in 1 Corinthians 13: Love is patient, love is kind . . .

Light and Eucharist – both serve as Jesus’ constant presence to us. When we enter the church today, we find the sanctuary light burning faithfully to represent the presence of the Eucharistic bread of Christ himself. Many religious rites call for the use of incense. Our Judeo-Christian culture brings us these signs of God’s presence and of the presence of his eternal covenant promise to us. We need to keep these multi-sensory symbols in mind as pages of our spiritual scrapbook. In this way, we may find it easier to be and do good as God is and does good. We may be able to curb our anger and be more comfortable with treating others kindly and compassionately. We may be better able to cease judging and chiding others for their faults and crimes.

By remembering in this special way that God is Light and Sustenance, we crown others with kindness and compassion even as our loving and eternal God crowns us. And so we pray: Good and kind God, As the Sanctuary Light and the Showbread reminded the Israelites of your fidelity and promise, let today’s sanctuary light and the Eucharistic bread remind us that . . . as the heavens are high above the earth, so surpassing is your kindness toward those who love you. Amen.

We will be away from the Internet for several days. Please enjoy this reflection first posted on June 27, 2011.

This week as we near Palm Sunday, we spend time with each morning’s first reading for daily liturgy. Today we explore our hearts as we look at our commitment to our covenant with God.

We ask . . . Do I feel present to others in God’s love? How do I act on the promises I have made to God? How does God interact with me? How do I interact with others – both those who follow Christ and those who do not? Am I aware of The Law written within? And if not, what do I do to open myself to the Spirit?

Looking forward to the end of Job’s story we have the choice of thinking that Job’s happy ending is the result of fantasy, or we may choose to believe that God abides and keeps promises. This choice to believe or doubt is entirely up to us; and I choose to believe that the story is not a fairy tale. I choose to believe that God abides.

THE MESSAGE translation of Job 40 begins with words from God, “I run the universe”. After we struggle with Job through his long story of loss and pain, we understand that although he – and we – long for specific answers to our specific questions, we must be content to rely on God’s goodness and love for us. We must be content to depend on God’s gift of hope and covenant. And we must be content to trust God’s steadfastness and mercy.

How do we do this? We have a model in Job whose fidelity through deep travail brings us a pearl of wisdom that we might employ to see our worries and anxieties through a lens of patience. Job’s persistence, as he journeys through the obstacle course of woe visited on him by Satan, gives us new eyes to refocus our own worldview.

When we spend time with Job 40, we have a fresh appreciation of his steadfastness; and we have a transformative moment to argue with the Almighty that opens us to the possibility of resurrection.

Today we use the scripture links and drop-down menus to help us argue with the Almighty.

We have seen this chapter of Jeremiah before – the beautiful promise of the New Covenant – the gift of God’s eternal and all-saving love for us, God’s bride. We have only to invoke God’s name to think of this covenant.

Today is the Feast of the Most Holy Name of Jesus and the Meditation in MAGNIFICAT is apropos. Here is a piece of the citation from Fr. Raneiro Cantalmessa, O.F.M.CAP., the preacher to the papal household.

The invocation of the name Jesus helps, above all, to crush at the onset thoughts of pride, self-gratification, anger or impure thoughts. All we have to do is observe our own thoughts as if they weren’t ours and follow their development. . . What really spoils our heart is our self-seeking and the search for our own glory. Those who contemplate God turn away from themselves: they are obliged to forget themselves and lose sight of themselves. Those who contemplate God do not contemplate themselves!

Of course, we can swing too far in this direction as well . . . refusing to think about what needs sorting out about ourselves. We can choose to ignore the things we need to work on and we can use the contemplation of God as an excuse. Balance. Spiritual and personal maturity always has balance.

Jesus himself spent days in the desert balanced by days wading among the people as he cured and healed them both physically and spiritually. We can follow his example. We can set aside a time during our activity-packed day to – as Jeremiah urges – contemplate the evil and good we see around us . . . and to meditate on the goodness of our God whom we call Lord of Hosts.

Dearest, abiding Lord,

You who are greater than the natural laws, the foundations of the earth and the people . . .

You who are more immense than skies which contain the sun, the moon and the stars . . .

You who stir the waves of the sea to roar, who protects forever his people . . .

You who promise to hold us forever, who forgives us when we turn to you . . .

You maintain the balance of your immense universe yet you remember each one of us each day.

On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love gives to me ten lords a-leaping.

Many of us are familiar with The Ten Commandments that Yahweh gives to Moses, but how often do we pause to think of the fact the God, through Moses, not only gives us a simple set of rules to follow, but that he explains the effect these rules will have on our lives. God sees our authenticity by the way we live, and by the way we do or do not say, “Yes,” in response to God’s call. Today the old Christmas carol poses these questions to us: do we see the Gospel stories as a fulfillment of God’s hope in the covenant God establishes with us in the promise of the Ten Commandments?

This part of the Exodus story is bracketed by two convergent episodes: the provision of quail, manna and water by God to the Israelites, and the planning and building of a desert temple-tent for Yahweh by the Israelites. We see actions by both God and the Chosen People that speak of their desire to live in a covenant relationship. And the actual agreement, along with its explanations and implications, lies between these two actions in chapters 20 to 24.

The Holy Spirit

God takes the Israelites out of bondage – just as Jesus later does for all when he comes to live among us and to institute the Kingdom (in Luke 4:14-30). With the giving of the commandments, God foresees the struggle of the people in the desert. God’s preservation and protection of these people bring to God not only fame, glory and praise, but also an arrogant, contemptuous rejection by us. So too does Jesus arrive among God’s people to fulfill the Mosaic Law, to provide and protect us, and then to suffer at our hands; yet ultimately, God the Father and God the Son both offer their compassion and mercy to us when we are wayward. All that is required of us is that we repent of our past transgressions and then respond to the call. Just as God sent an angel to guard the Israelites and bring them to the place God had in mind for them (23: 20-33), so too does Jesus send the Holy Spirit to dwell with us after Jesus’ resurrection – to guide and protect, and to lead us to the holy place he has prepared for us. Of course, later in Chapter 32 of Exodus, the people tire of waiting for Moses to descend Mt. Sinai, so they create and worship the Golden Calf. Moses returns, breaks the tablets and loses his patience. The people repent, agree to do as Yahweh asks and Yahweh restores the tablets. A familiar story that we repeat today – we only need to read and compare history and current events. And it is no wonder that we stray – no wonder that the Israelites strayed. When we look at chapters 20 to 24 of Exodus, we see the social implications of the Mosaic Law. We might pay special attention to some of the verses that hold ideas difficult to take, verses that call for us to respect ourselves and one another: 22:15, 23:1, 22: 1-3, 22: 20, 21:35-36.

So on this day when we continue our celebration of God’s truest gift of love, we take a few moments to recollect our experiences in covenant relationships with others. We might mediate for a bit on how we might remain faithful to the one central covenant in our lives. And we might decide how best to renew that covenant each day with our Creator.

Adapted from a reflection on The Ten Commandments written February 14, 2007.

How can we assess the measure of joy as the peoples returned to a fortified city with the Temple that housed the presence of the Lord? Millennia later, we have no video or sound recordings, but we do have the listing of the clans who returned from exile jubilant and grateful. And we have their story recorded in Scripture.

God inspired me to assemble the people and their leaders and officials and to check their family records. I located the records of those who had first returned from captivity, and this is the information I found.

What do we find when we examine these verses? What do we find when we examine our own fidelity to God?

Many of the exiles left the province of Babylon and returned to Jerusalem and Judah, each to his own hometown. Their families had been living in exile in Babylonia ever since King Nebuchadnezzar had taken them there as prisoners.

After making drastic changes in our lives in order to survive, are we willing to return to the living God who brings us out of dark deserts of our lives to sustain us daily?

This is the list of the priestly clans that returned from exile, clans of Temple workers who returned from exile, Clans of Solomon’s servants who returned from exile. many people who contributed to help pay the cost of restoring the Temple, 42,360 in all.

After great schism, are we eager to count ourselves among the families of return?

The priests, the Levites, the Temple guards, the musicians, many of the ordinary people, the Temple workers—all the people of Israel—settled in the towns and cities of Judah.

After great sorrow, are we open to the promise of the Covenant of Love that promises healing and transformation?

We have just experienced the longest liturgical season of the year, Eastertide. What will we do with the promise we have been given? How have we examined ourselves during our Lenten desert passage, what do we do now that we have arrived at the empty tomb? How do we enact the promise of the resurrection? Do we await the risen Christ who sits with us, dines with us, prays with us and heals us? Do we take what we believe to be ours by force? Or worse still, once we see that our apportioned lot has not yet arrived, will we take something from someone else as our determined recompense for what we see as an unjustified lack? Do we allow our sense of entitlement to cause us to end our Easter joy a bit too soon? Do we miss the risen Christ because we are busy elsewhere, making certain that “we get what is ours?”

Reward arrives in due season, when at its height to be savored best by those who wait on the Lord. Humility and a right attitude about who we are in relation to God and to his creatures will discipline the willing heart. The covenant is renewed. We already have our reward, although we may not yet see it. And so we pray for the wisdom to wait, the patience to discern, and the love to abide in Christ Jesus who walks and lives among us. Rather than rush to the table to take our tribal place higher than what might be ours, let us await the beckoning of the king to seat us at our proper place for he is among us, and he loves us well. We do best to wait on God’s will, rather than determine our own.

As a counterbalance to the description of the downfall of Tyre on which we have reflected before, today we have a description of the temple in the New Jerusalem. What we see described here is God living with all of the Israelites forever. The man leading the prophet through this beautiful scenario says: Describe the temple to the people of Israel, that they may be ashamed of their sins. Let them consider the plan, and if they are ashamed of all they have done, make known to them the design of the temple – its arrangements, its exits and entrances – its whole design and all its regulations and laws. Write these down before them so that they may be faithful to its design and follow all its regulations.This portion of Ezekiel’s prophecy is full of detailed descriptions of the place and the people who make up this new city where God dwells forever with his people. It was meant to both instruct and to bring comfort to those who lived in exile with this prophet. The footnotes in the NAB point out that in the new Israel the temple is free, even physically, from civil jurisdiction – moving away from the habit of corrupt kings like Ahaz and Manasseh who treated it as a private chapel for pagan rites.

Noam Chen: Old City of Jerusalem

When Jesus arrived on the scene hundreds of years later as the true Messiah, he upset much of this separatist and purist thinking. It was for his openness and universality that he was hunted down, condemned and put to death. Because his new Law of Love fulfilled and superseded the old Law of Moses, he and his apostles were hounded out of towns and executed. Even in the early Christian church we see the struggle with this idea of openness and universality with the first Council which convened in Jerusalem to determine the importance of circumcision as a requirement for church membership. After discussion, and when the dust settles, we read in Acts that circumcision was not determined necessary. God’s church is open to Gentile and Jew, slave or free, woman or man – to all those who will be faithful to the Covenant first established with Adam and Eve.

This is how we see the New Temple and the New Jerusalem as revealed by Ezekiel millennia ago. This place of worship where God dwells is where we live even today . . . if we might only choose to open our eyes and ears to it. This prophet was painting a picture of radiance for his exiled peope, and they must have taken heart at the memories these words stirred of how it is to gather together as Yahweh’s faithful to repent, to petition, to give thanks, to worship.

As Easter people who believe in the Resurrected Jesus, we too, can relax into these images and make them our own. We can carry them into the world with us each day as we encounter and then counter the darkness that wishes to prevail. We can arm ourselves with these pictures of the universal gathering of all of God’s People . . . the Faithful to the Covenant . . . the Hopeful in all things hopeless . . . the Truthful in all relationships . . . the Struggling with the cares of this world . . . the Freed who have escaped the chains of doubt and anxiety. For we are Easter people who live the Resurrection even now. For God’s Glory has returned in us . . . in our willingness to serve . . . our willingness to be vulnerable . . . our willingness to witness . . . our willingness to be Christ and Light and Truth to a world struggling to be free of the darkness.